INDGEN001: Interdisciplinary Section: Gender Studies individual proposals panel

Unmasking Eros: Demystifying the Liberative Potential of Female Masochism in Hotel Iris

Paper short abstract

Through an analysis of Ogawa Yōko’s novel Hotel Iris, as well as its subsequent film adaptation, my research explores female masochism’s role in reimagining liberation in post-1990s Japan.

Paper long abstract

My research explores female masochism’s role in reimagining liberation in post-1990s Japan. Using Ogawa Yōko’s novel Hotel Iris, along with its film adaptation, as a case study, I examine how the protagonist deploys masochistic contracts to navigate oppressive matriarchal structures. I draw on Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial theory to analyze how the adaptation reconfigures space and race, and engage Michel Foucault and Jack Halberstam’s theories of queer time to explore how female masochism spreads infectiously, enabling liberation for adjacent marginalized figures—including recurring disabled and queer characters. I distill this spatial and social praxis of female masochism into the term “osmotic masochism.”

I then situate Hotel Iris within a broader literary tradition by comparing its portrayal of female masochism to canonical depictions of male masochism. Drawing on Monica Swindle and Honda Masuko’s theories of “girl” elusivity, I argue that while male masochism often symbolizes national identity, female masochism is more fluid and less tethered to nationalist ideals, offering more diverse and adaptive forms of liberation. In this context, I examine tensions within Japan’s Women’s Liberation Movement—particularly following the 1994 publication of the women’s studies journal Joseigaku Nenpō, which addressed rifts between mainstream feminism and marginalized groups. I argue that female masochism reflects these divisions and challenges dominant feminist boundaries, offering emancipatory potential for those excluded from mainstream discourse.

Ultimately, this essay highlights the evolving significance of female masochism as a tool for contesting dominant social structures and rethinking the intersections of gender, power, and liberation in contemporary Japanese media and culture.

Onnagata as a Career Choice for Gender-Variant Men in the Tokugawa and Meiji Periods

Daniele Durante (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)

Paper short abstract

The paper examines the reasons why a few gender-variant men in the Tokugawa and Meiji periods worked as onnagata, arguing that: - they derived bodily pleasure from wearing women’s clothes and having sex with men; - the job as onnagata allowed them to satisfy those interests.

Paper long abstract

As is well known, the onnagata is an actor in Kabuki theatre who specialises in female roles. Numerous researchers have studied this category of actors to understand how gender was conceptualised during the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). What is less known is that in the second half of the Tokugawa period and in the early Meiji period (1868-1912) a few men pursued a career as onnagata to facilitate their adoption of a feminine gender performance. This paper will explore the reasons why said men assumed a feminine gender performance and why they used Kabuki as a cultural resource to reach this end. To answer the first point, the paper will argue that these men derived bodily pleasure from wearing women’s clothes and hairstyles and from having sex with men. To answer the second point, the paper will suggest that reciting as an onnagata involved cross-dressing as a technique that allowed men to impersonate female characters and onnagata often doubled as prostitutes for men. Since working as an onnagata included cross-dressing and having sex with men, the subjects under study saw the job as a viable way to satisfy their interests. As primary sources, to address the first point the paper will use the zuihitsu Kumo no itomaki (ca. 1846-1850) by Santō Kyōzan (1769-1858), the Kokugaku treatise Waka no hokakushō (ca. 1850) by Motoori Uchitō (1792-1885), and newspaper articles in Osaka nishikiga shinwa 5/ca. 1872, Yomiuri shinbun 30/04/1881, and Yūbin hōchi shinbun 2470/1881, while to address the second point Ayamegusa (ca. 1776) about the famed onnagata Yoshizawa Ayame I (1673-1729). The paper will adopt the approaches of cultural history, gender history, and sexuality history as well as Sherry Ortner’s practice theory. To interpret the sources, the paper will use the life history methodology and historical discourse analysis. The paper will fill an important gap in the state of the art as it will advance our knowledge about the lived experiences of gender-variant individuals in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan and how they used available cultural customs to express their genders.

Decolonial Feminism in Japan: Rethinking the “Comfort Women” Issue

Mizuho Tsuchino (Meisei University)

Paper short abstract

This paper examines decolonial feminism in Japan through the Japanese military “comfort women” issue, arguing that it compelled Japanese feminism to confront Japan’s colonial rule and war responsibility, while asking how this unfinished engagement can be sustained in the present.

Paper long abstract

This paper re-examines the development and positioning of decolonial feminism in Japan, focusing on the issue of the Japanese military “comfort women.” Decolonial feminism has developed internationally as a theoretical framework that critiques the modernity and colonialism embedded within feminism, while centering the experiences and knowledge of women who have historically been placed in subordinated positions. In the context of Japanese feminism, however, this perspective has rarely been articulated in a sustained and systematic manner.

In recent years, publications and scholarly interventions by Ainu women and Buraku women have made visible renewed efforts to interrogate colonialism and structures of discrimination within Japanese society from feminist perspectives. These debates have generated growing demands for Japanese feminism to engage with decolonial feminism as a theoretical and political task, and the paper situates itself within this contemporary context.

While practices resonant with decolonial feminist concerns—such as support for migrant women workers and activism by Zainichi Korean women—have existed, they have often remained marginalized within mainstream feminist discourse. As a result, engagement with Japan’s colonial past and war responsibility has remained limited.

Against this backdrop, the paper marks the emergence of the Japanese military “comfort women” issue in the 1990s as a decisive historical moment that compelled Japanese feminism to confront decolonial questions. This issue not only concerns sexual violence against women but also fundamentally calls into question Japan’s colonial rule and war responsibility. Until Korean women began to address the issue publicly, it was not proactively taken up as a feminist issue within Japan.

This paper does not approach decolonial feminism as a definitive or final framework. Rather, it conceptualizes decolonial feminism as an unfinished project that emerged through this historical confrontation and continues to be reconstituted through the interplay between historical experience and present-day practices. From this perspective, the “comfort women” issue remains a central task, as the responses it generated were never fully realized. The issue continues to demand feminist practices that resist forgetting and sustain ethical commitments to the dignity of survivors. Through this analysis, the paper considers how Japanese feminism can continue to engage with decolonial challenges.

Why Japan’s Transfer Regime Persists: Gender, Care, and Family

Atsuko Fujino (Kyoto Sangyo University)

Paper short abstract

Why do Japan’s company transfers persist? Transfers signal male promotion, while women absorb mobility costs via unpaid care. Surveys and interviews suggest that transfer households sustain a modern-family model, prolonging Japan’s transfer regime and slowing progress on gender equality.

Paper long abstract

In Japan, company-ordered relocations (tenkin) are widely associated with regular employment. Firms exercise broad personnel authority, making transfer timing and destination hard to predict, while refusal is institutionally and normatively difficult. This transfer regime consolidated as a private-sector employment practice during Japan’s postwar high-growth era, beginning in the 1950s.

Since the early 2000s, reforms to this regime have been debated, but substantive changes in practice became more visible mainly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the transfer regime remains widespread across firms, suggesting that key drivers of its persistence have not been fully addressed.

Drawing on Marxist feminist debates, I conceptualize the tenkin regime as a homosocial “men selecting men” mechanism: willingness to relocate signals suitability for promotion and higher pay within core regular tracks. Crucially, however, this regime has been sustained by a gendered division of labor. As men’s careers are organized around mobility, women disproportionately absorb the social-reproductive costs through unpaid housework and care and the reorganization of everyday life, thereby enabling transfers and helping reproduce the regime over time.

Until around the 1980s, transfers were largely assigned to male regular employees and family accompaniment was common, supported by standardized company housing (shataku). From the 1980s onward, children’s schooling increasingly constrained moves and solo transfers (tanshin funin) spread; after the 1990s, the contraction of company housing further normalized solo arrangements.

Using fertility behavior since the 1990s as a lens, this presentation asks whether households embedded in the transfer regime still reproduce a gendered modern-family model or are shifting toward mobility–fertility tensions reported in dual-earner contexts.

Empirically, I analyze two surveys (2016: 3,000 married women whose husbands are regular employees; 2018: 3,000 regular employees, women and men) and 22 in-depth interviews (2022–2024) with transferees and spouses. I argue that, although destabilizing factors have emerged since the 1990s, fertility among transfer households appears relatively maintained, helping to prolong Japan’s transfer regime and delay progress on gender equality; I close with implications for redesigning mobility-related support as dual-earner careers expand.

Keywords: tenkin (company-ordered relocation); tanshin funin (solo transfer); transfer regime; gendered division of labor; company housing (shataku); regular employment

Dominant Masculinity in Japan: Old and New Directions

Robert O'Mochain (Ritsumeikan University)

"Can you talk like a girl?" Gender dynamics and Japanese role language in the manga series “Shugo Chara!” – An analysis of the cross-dressing character Nadeshiko/Nagihiko

Rocio Linares Aguirre (University of Vic)

Paper short abstract

The paper explores how the duo of mangaka PeachPit portray gender performativity through the character Nadeshiko/Nagihiko. It analyzes the visual elements in cross-dressing and magical girl/boy transformation, and the use of Japanese role language in a character that fluctuates between both genders.

Paper long abstract

The manga "Shugo Chara!" explores the concept of identity in a way that would be easy to understand for a younger audience and while some characters debate about things like growing up or becoming stronger, there is also the conflict of gender and the corresponding roles traditionally associated with it. This is particularly predominant in one character: “Nadeshiko/Nagihiko”.

Nadeshiko is introduced in the first volume of the manga as a girl. She is usually soft-spoken, wears her hair on a ponytail and engages in traditionally female activities such as cooking and dancing. However, as most characters in the series, she has a hidden side of her in which she turns violent, loud, wields a naginata and speaks in a hyper-masculine Hiroshima accent. As time passes, it is revealed that such a hidden side was foreshadowing the truth that Nadeshiko is, in fact, a boy and her real name is Nagihiko. As Nagihiko, he is bolder, lets his hair loose and is also quite the playboy. His speech pattern, then, changes to a more boyish one.

The aim of the paper is to approach the subject of characterization of gender-fluid characters in manga by the combination of visual cues (such as gestures and character design through cross-dressing and magical transformations) and Japanese role language (also known as 役割語　yakuwarigo). It takes into consideration the theory proposed by Butler (1999) of gender being performative, but it also references the work of Chino (1994) in her analysis of Japanese Art History seen through gender in which the feminine is associated with tradition, softness and the private, and the masculine, with the foreign, wild and public. By also following Kinsui's (2023) studies on Japanese role language and Mills' (1995) Feminist stylistics, it examines the visual and speech stereotypes linked with femininity and masculinity from a gender studies perspective and how the manga continues to promote traditional gender roles despite its premise of “one can be whoever one wants to be”.

Keywords: Gender performativity, cross-dressing, characterization, Japanese role language, gender stereotypes

Audio-visual equipment: projector

Queering Love and Intimacy through Sex Work in Japan

Lalasa Tomita (National University of Singapore)

Paper short abstract

This paper examines practices that queer normative understandings of love and intimacy, particularly monogamy, within Japan’s sex industry. It highlights sex work as a site that unsettles normativity and explores the challenges faced by queer individuals working in a heteronormative sex industry.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores some of the queer attempts and activities that have been developing and blooming within the sex industry in Japan, despite its predominance of heteronormative service styles. While the contention over whether sex work constitutes unfree labor or an occupation that can be entered with valid informed consent remains a major focus among feminist and gender scholars, the complexity of sex workers’ livelihoods and sexualities has been severely overlooked in academic and political discussions.

Nonetheless, many studies on the sex industry and related fields continue to focus heavily on cisgender women sex workers, often without incorporating a queer perspective. This emphasis appears to be partly due to their relatively greater accessibility as a research population, as well as the persistence of protectionist and misogynistic forms of discrimination, which continue to generate urgent issues and constrain sex workers’ ability to make their own choices. My own research has also primarily focused on female sex workers, as I problematize the restrictive regulation of sex work that targets the “female” body, rooted in a long history of monitoring and enclosing women’s sexual subjectivity in the name of patriarchal protection. However, as I investigate the complex livelihoods of sex workers—within which strategies and forms of resistance emerge—it has also become evident that even within a heterosexual service system, there exist multiple practices that queer sexual normativity.

Therefore, this paper aims to highlight sex work as a practice that queers normative understandings of love and intimacy, including monogamy, and positions sex work as a possible mode of survival that does not require the sacrifice of sexual freedom or non-normative gender expression. It also examines the challenges articulated by my interlocutors as queer individuals working within a heteronormative sex industry. In doing so, the paper adds nuance and foregrounds dimensions that have yet to be sufficiently addressed in studies of sexuality in Japan.

Regulating Desire: Gender, Abstinence, and Intimacy in Japanese Youth

Alice Pacher (Chuo University)

Living Like Oneself: Negotiating Trans Masculinities in Kyūshū between Authenticity and Normative Expectations

Caterina Pavan (Turin University)

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how trans men in Kyūshū negotiate and perform masculinities, showing how they gradually move beyond stereotypical norms toward authentic, gender-affirming expressions.

Paper long abstract

Trans men remain underrepresented in both Japanese trans studies and masculinity studies, with existing scholarship focusing almost exclusively on individuals living in Tōkyō (Yuen 2018, 2020). This narrows our understanding of trans experiences in Japan by treating the capital as a normative frame, while obscuring the ways in which regional differences shape trans lives.

My research addresses this gap by adopting an inductive approach grounded in the experiences of trans men in Kyūshū, a revealing site for examining how masculinities are constructed, negotiated, and inhabited in provincial settings. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork, complemented by qualitative methods such as walk-along interviews, life histories, and participant observation, I explore how my research participants make sense of their identities and enact their masculinities in a region commonly associated with conservative gender norms and expectations.

I argue that, rather than reproducing shared masculine traits associated with stereotypical regional male identities, the participants to my study construct their masculinities through the pursuit of jibunrashisa 自分らしさ ("authenticity", “being true to oneself”), even when this runs counter to hegemonic masculine ideals and incorporates traits and practices conventionally coded as feminine. While their process of gender affirmation often begins with the adoption of normative masculine behaviors, which function as recognizable markers of masculinity in social interaction, at a later stage they describe a reflexive re-evaluation of these practices, gradually distancing themselves from them and integrating forms of self-expression they experience as more authentic. These dynamics resonate with previous research conducted in different sociocultural contexts (see Todd et al., 2022; Anzani et al., 2024).

By foregrounding regionality and lived experience, this paper offers preliminary findings that contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how Japanese trans masculinities are locally produced, embodied, and negotiated over time, aiming to contribute to broader discussions on the interplay between authenticity and normative expectations in the production of gendered identities.

Cute or Coarse? Dialect and Competing Models of Femininity in Contemporary Japanese Novels

Hanna Jaśkiewicz (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń)

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how female use of Osaka and Tōhoku dialects in contemporary Japanese fiction interacts with gender norms, comparing their speech with standard Japanese onna kotoba and exploring how authors negotiate femininity in six novels.

Paper long abstract

In fiction, gendered language appears frequently, reproducing traditional associations of femininity, despite not reflecting actual language use (Ohara 2019). Most prior studies focus on works in standard Japanese. An important exception is provided by King et al. (2022), who examine how the Osaka dialect in Kore-eda’s film Soshite, chichi ni naru functions as a resource for constructing an alternative model of masculinity. By contrast, this paper focuses on the representation of female speakers of Osaka and Tōhoku dialects. Survey-based studies have found that both dialects are perceived as masculine (Tanaka 2011: 72), making it particularly interesting to examine how the authors negotiate between gender norms and regional identity.

The material comprises six novels: Kirikirijin (1981), Ubatokimeki (1987), Naniwa shōnen tanteidan (1988), Prinsesu Toyotomi (2009), Itomichi (2011), and Ora ora de hitori igu mo (2017). First, the frequency of dialectal markers in dialogues of comparable length between female and male characters is counted to determine whether female characters avoid dialect use due to its masculine associations. Next, female utterances are examined for features associated with onna kotoba—self-reference, address terms, sentence-final particles, honorifics, and interjections (Okamoto 1995: 301)—and compared with their use in standard Japanese. Finally, the constructions of female characters are analysed in the broader context of each work, particularly in relation to traditional and new models of femininity.

Results show female characters use dialects as frequently as male ones, but the stylization differs from representations in standard Japanese. Aware of potential associations with masculinity, writers feminize the characters through narration, drawing on various models ranging from the cute country girl to the rebellious tomboy.

King, Sara, Yi Ren, Kaori Idemaru, Cindi Sturtzsreetharan. 2022. “Sounding Like a Father: The Influence of Regional Dialect on Perceptions of Masculinity and Fatherhood.” Language in Society 51(2): 285–308.

Ohara, Yumiko. 2019. “Gendered Speech.” In Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics, 279–295. Routledge.

Okamoto, Shigeko. 1995. “Tasteless Japanese: Less Feminine Speech Among Young Japanese Women.” In Women and Language: Gender Articulate; Language and the Socially Constructed Self, 297–328. Routledge.

Tanaka, Yukari. 2011. “Hōgen kosupure”-no jidai. Nise Kansai-ben-kara ryūma-go-made. Iwanami Shoten.

Reinterpreting Human Rights Across Cultures: Women Defenders in Japan and Indonesia

Sri Ayu Wulansari (University of Indonesia)

Paper short abstract

This paper compares women human rights defenders in Japan and Indonesia, showing how women reinterpret human rights and gender equality through culturally grounded activism shaped by distinct legal, socio cultural, and political contexts

Paper long abstract

This research develops a cross-cultural comparative analysis of women human rights defenders in Japan and Indonesia, examining how women’s rights activism is enabled and constrained by distinct political, legal, and cultural environments. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and cultural capital, the analysis explores how women activists convert lived experience, professional expertise, and moral authority into resources for reinterpreting human rights and gender equality in everyday practice. The 1990s constitute a critical conjuncture in both cases, though with divergent trajectories. In Japan, the so-called lost decade coincided with the institutionalization of gender equality discourse, incremental legal reform, and the expansion of state-centered advocacy channels. Within this context, many women human rights defenders pursued change through litigation, policy engagement, and legal interpretation, forms of activism aligned with partially accommodating political and bureaucratic structures. In Indonesia, by contrast, the fall of authoritarian rule in 1998 catalysed a surge of women led mobilization around domestic violence, polygamy, reproductive rights, and religiously sanctioned gender norms. These struggles frequently placed women activists in direct contestation with religious authorities and entrenched political power. Despite these differences, shared logics of mobilization emerge across both contexts. Women defenders’ activism is grounded in everyday experiences of exclusion, silence, and injustice, and in commitments to recover marginalized women’s histories while contesting dominant narratives. Informed by feminist human rights scholarship that foregrounds ordinary yet extraordinary women, this study approaches women defenders not as symbolic representatives of rights, but as producers of human rights knowledge and practice. From a comparative perspective, women human rights defenders function as cultural translators of human rights, mediating universal rights claims through locally meaningful repertoires of legitimacy, affect, and ethics. These pathways illuminate how human rights are continually remade through the interplay of cultural capital, emotional labour, and ethical commitment.

"Contemporary gender struggles between work and housework in a popular 2025 Japanese TV drama"

Hisako Nishimura

Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes the male and female characters featured in a TV drama”, which addresses the theme of balancing work and household duties in a contemporary context, and discusses the gender situation in Japan as presented by the drama.

Paper long abstract

This study examines the TBS drama series “Taigan no kaji. Kore ga watashi no ikiru michi!” The title of the drama “Taigan no kaji” is based on the saying “The fire on the other side of the river is none of my concern.” However, instead of fire (kaji), the word for household (kaji) is used here, implying that one does not have to worry about other people's household chores. However, this is precisely what is questioned in the drama.

The drama's main characters are men and women in their 20s and 30s striving to balance work, housework, and childcare while pursuing cutting-edge lifestyles. The protagonist is Shiho, a full-time homemaker with a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Reiko is a dual-income woman with two young children, Tatsuya Nakatani, a career bureaucrat at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is raising his one-year-old daughter after taking two years of childcare leave. Shiho is criticized by the two as a “threatened species” and told that “housewives who don't work are a luxury in an era of declining birthrates and aging populations”, yet she steps in to help with housework and childcare when they face difficulties. Furthermore, contemporary topics are woven throughout: an elderly woman developing dementia and requiring care, a young wife struggling with societal pressure to “have children soon,” and a single mother pushed to the brink mentally.

I will analyze this drama from my perspective as someone engaged in media literacy research and practice. First, I will select symbolic scenes and conduct visual analysis to examine the characters' beliefs and values, as well as their approaches to resolving care work such as housework and childcare. Additionally, I aim to interpret the drama by considering the gender policies underlying it and incorporating critical feminist discourse on these policies.

Diverse Motherhoods in Contemporary Japanese Culture

Forum Mithani (Cardiff University)

Paper short abstract

Building on Asai’s (1990) concept of the maternal fantasy, this paper investigates how manga artists Tabusa Eiko and Aoyagi Chika are challenging the idealised image of motherhood as asexual, undesiring and self-sacrificing through their working practices and feminist activism.

Paper long abstract

Over the past three decades, Japan has witnessed significant social and demographic change caused in part by shifting conceptions of gender and family, with the figure of the mother becoming one of the most contested sites of gender discourse. Stories of transgression are particularly valuable for their potential as a window into the anxieties and pain of a society undergoing political upheaval, particularly with regards to changing gender dynamics and the advancement of women’s rights. As the opportunities and forms by which women can participate in cultural production in a changing media landscape have increased, representations of transgression have served as outlets for affirmative expressions of female desire as well as dissatisfaction with existing social norms. In a world now dominated by screens, visual media and internet cultures play an integral role in articulating, interrogating, transgressing and reimagining womanhood and femininity. Manga, in particular, serves as a critical space for “encompass[ing] a multiplicity of voices and experiences” by utilising metaphor, humour and the specific visual vocabulary of the medium (Seaman 2017, 112). Against the backdrop of a post-capitalist 21st century Japan suffering prolonged economic stagnation, where women’s social progress has been stymied by a conservative backlash, female manga artists and illustrators Tabusa Eiko and Aoyagi Chika draw on their personal experiences to reflect candidly on topics such as motherhood and sexual desire, women’s bodies during and after pregnancy, postnatal depression, anxiety and mental health, domestic violence and maternal ambivalence or regret. Their work, which spans a range of formats, from printed collections of manga and illustrated essays to online columns and blogs, touch on many of the issues concerning Japanese women today, including the work-life balance, marriage and relationships, gender discrimination and inequality, and childrearing. Building on Asai’s (1990) concept of the maternal fantasy, this paper investigates how female manga artists are challenging the idealised image of motherhood as asexual, undesiring and self-sacrificing through their working practices and feminist activism, both within and outside the medium of manga.

Gender Structures and Gender Based Violence (GBV) in Japan's Artistic and Creative Environment

Keiko Takeda (Tokyo University of Freign Studies)

Unread guidelines and silenced voices: Performative allyship and institutional queerphobia in Japanese higher education

Tianqi Zhang

Paper short abstract

This study examines the implementation of LGBTQ+ guidelines at a national university in Western Japan. It argues that the mere publication of guidelines serves as a performative act that benefits the institution's image rather than genuinely supporting the LGBTQ+ students and staff.

Paper long abstract

In recent years, an increasing number of Japanese universities have introduced guidelines for LGBTQ+ students and staff, reflecting a broader trend in higher education to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. These documents, on the one hand, promote understanding and outline support policies; the impact of these measures remains unclear and raises concerns that they may constitute "performative allyship", symbolic acts that fail to challenge existing norms or benefit marginalized groups. By employing a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative data with personal narratives, this case study critically examines the implementation of LGBTQ+ guidelines at a national university in Western Japan.

Survey results regarding the readership of the university’s LGBTQ+ guidelines (N=253) indicate a gap between awareness and engagement: while half of the respondents were aware of the guidelines, only one-fifth had actually read them. Further analysis reveals that such awareness significantly associates with prior knowledge of LGBTQ+ issues and participation in SOGIE-related workshops and training, rather than with the university’s dissemination efforts. To contextualize the argument, personal stories illustrate experiences of "institutional silencing" that persist despite the existence of supportive guidelines. Reports of dismissive attitudes by faculty and gatekeeping during the integration of queer elements into language class activities suggest that, without proper enforcement, the guidelines fail to intervene in actual instances of queerphobia.

This paper aims to highlight that simply publishing guidelines may serve as a performative gesture that benefits the institution's image and perpetuates "institutional queerphobia." Our analysis suggests that without confronting underlying power dynamics and ensuring genuine engagement, "standardized" guidelines risk becoming tools for "rainbow-washing" that leave real issues faced by LGBTQ+ individuals and critical aspects of LGBTQ+ well-being unaddressed. To move beyond superficial guidelines-making, institutions must consequently seek approaches that actively dismantle the silence and oppression surrounding queer issues within Japanese higher education.

Representing Diversity in a Space of Collective Education: Challenges Faced by LGBTQ+ JET Programme Participants in Japan

Ami Kobayashi (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau) Kazuyoshi Kawasaka (University of Tokyo)

Paper short abstract

Based on a content analysis of interviews with 16 LGBTQ+ JET teachers who are currently working or have worked in Japanese schools, this paper discusses how their experiences are shaped by the institutional gap between Japan and other countries with established LGBTQ+ rights protection systems.

Paper long abstract

This paper aims to discuss the unique experiences that non-Japanese LGBTQ+ teachers have faced in Japanese schools, based on a content analysis of interviews conducted between 2021 and 2024 with 16 Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme participants who are currently working or have worked in Japanese schools. Since its establishment in 1987, the JET Programme has accepted thousands of college graduates from overseas every year. In addition to its official purpose of promoting the internationalization (kokusaika) of Japan from a grassroots level, the JET Programme has had the unintended consequence of contributing to the creation of spaces in Japanese society for diversity, as many LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color have participated in the program and interacted with local communities. By contrasting the experiences and narratives of those who had worked prior to the introduction of same-sex marriage and trans-inclusive passports in their home countries with those who worked after it, this paper discusses how the experiences of non-Japanese LGBTQ+ JET teachers are shaped by the institutional gap between Japan and other countries where LGBTQ+ rights protection systems have already been introduced.

Our interview analysis shows that LGBTQ+ JET Programme participants, whether or not they openly displayed their sexual and gender identities, played a role in representing 'diversity' in Japanese classrooms, which are usually collective oriented. Partly due to the so-called Collectivism Education (shûdanshugki kyôiku), which was spread nationwide by the Japanese Teachers' Union in post-war Japan, Japanese schools still focus on group activities that aim to create a homogeneous 'we'-feeling. In this context, some Japanese school staff reacted overly sensitively to JET Programme Participants’ passports with “X” in the sex category and caused unnecessary confusion. In other cases, however, they were regarded as “experts” of sexual minority issues, to whom one should contact if one has questions about sexual minorities.

Between Concealment, Empowerment, and the Aesthetics of Whiteness: Anne Pads Advertising

Xiaoyang Hao (Kyushu University)

Turning points matter: Survival strategies of Japanese women managers in a male-dominated society

Kyoko Satoh (Yokohama City Iniversity)

Paper short abstract

This study examines how Japanese women managers narrate career turning points to construct professional identities and negotiate gendered norms. Analysis of 28 interviews revealed generational contrasts in framing agency and contingency, highlighting implications for institutional change.

Paper long abstract

This study aimed to investigate how Japanese women managers construct professional identities through narratives of career turning points and how these narratives reveal and challenge gendered organizational structures. Narrative interview research has provided strong evidence that “turning points” are crucial for understanding the construction of professional identities. Despite the legal framework established by the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) in 1986, which prohibits discrimination based on gender at all stages of employment, substantial gender imbalances persist in Japanese corporations. For Japanese white-collar professional women working in such an environment, appropriate choices made at turning points are critical, but difficult to make because they have few role models to follow.

Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with white-collar professional Japanese women, this paper focuses on four long-tenured managers who have served in the same Japanese company for over two decades: two pioneers in their 50s who initiated their careers immediately following the enactment of the EEOL, and two successors in their 40s. Employing narrative analysis and thematic coding, this study identifies key turning points at the personal and organizational levels and examines how these were linguistically articulated from the perspectives of contingency, agency, and references to corporate culture and norms.

The findings demonstrate clear generational differences in how gender issues were perceived. Women in their 40s often narrated turning points (e.g., transfers, organizational reforms) as externally driven events, yet they framed these moments through a blend of contingency (“by chance”) and agency (“I wanted to try”), effectively constructing agentive self from imposed changes, even if they were gender-based transfers or inconveniences. Conversely, women in their 50s emphasized deliberate resistance to gender norms and critiques of rigid corporate systems, frequently adopting meta-narratives that expose systemic constraints.

This research holds significance in demonstrating how micro-level narrative practices intersect with macro-level institutional frameworks, thereby highlighting the importance of understanding generational differences through narrative analysis from turning-point perspectives. It further illustrates how entrenched gender norms are challenged and how such challenges are enacted.

Keywords: Japanese women managers, Career turning points, Narrative analysis, Gendered organizational norms, Generational differences

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